Re: Why you should never buy Symantec/Norton products

From: William B. Lurie (billurie_at_nospam.org)
Date: 03/15/04 

Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 06:13:47 -0500

Big Mac wrote:
> Re: Norton firewall wont install without errors
>
> "MARGARET" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
>>Have you ever tried to get support from Symantec. I have
>>been trying to get help from them since March 5th with no
>>replies yet. What kind of support is that. I am the only user
>>on the computer so I am the administator. Very frustrating
>
>
> As a user of Symantec products who uses these successfully -
> SystemWorks 2004, Norton Ghost 2003, and Norton Personal Firewall
> 2004, you'd think I'd jump to Symantec's defense, right? Well I am
> no going to defend them. I am darned lucky these programs work. They
> seem to work well too with my 2.1 GHz Athalon.
>
> But I did have a problem with updates with SystemWorks 2003 and it was
> tough luck - I wasn't going to pay "$29.95 per incident" to call them.
> I just happened to upgrade to 2004 because the thing was on sale and I
> got double rebates back, and it included the Personal Firewall too
> with it, so I took a $15 chance, otherwise I would have never touched
> a Symantec program again. BTW, the Personal Firewall would not let me
> view web pages with Earthlink dial-up, so i was out of luck there too.
> Only now it works since I am with Comcast cable.
>
> *** OK you Microsoft people who read this newsgroup:
> It's about time you stopped being soft on Symantec (you need to just
> come out and say their support completely sucks). It's about time to
> start to post all over your websites and wherever that "Symantec
> supports COMPLETELY sucks worse than anything else BY FAR" and to
> advise people to not buy their stuff only because of this - not that
> their products are bad for most people - only because of the
> OVERWHELMING sucky support issue.
>
> No voice tech support unless you pay mucho. And email support - HA!
> I can't find it, but people tell me it is buried somewhere. But even
> then it takes 4 weeks for an answer if they ever get one. And zero
> Usenet support. Not even a user based Symantec newsgroup with XP
> included in it.
>
> All they have is a website devoted to probs you might have, but if it
> ain't covered, OR if you are not technically minded as many people
> are not, you are s#%t out of luck.
>
> I just don't see hoe Symantec gets away with it.
>
> Big Mac
I second almost all of what Mac says. However, they DO eventually
give you polite responses---out of India-----but their 'solutions'
as often as not, do not work. And they are always embedded in
technical memo after memo that you have to download and print out.
In the case of just 'How to uninstall' one of their products, it
took 25 pages of intertwined instructions, horribly complicated,
impossible to follow.

Their Anti-Virus does work well........but on the whole, their
overall rating, to me, reminds me of the old old nursery rhyme

There was a little girl
And she had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good
she was very very good.
But when she was bad, she was horrid. 

-- 
                    William B. Lurie

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